The range of choice among the principal cultural events in Finland is wide, with multi-arts festivals, concerts and vocal arts and music festivals - including chamber music, jazz, folk music and folk dance, and rock and pop festivals -, also dance, theatre, literature and visual arts' festivals, etc.

The 80 member festivals of Finland Festivals attract a combined annual audience of almost two million visitors to events involving more than 20'000 performing artists.

The roots of Finnish music go deep down into a unique national heritage. The Kalevala (1835), forms the basis of all Finnish culture - including music. It has been estimated that approximately 2'500-3'000 years ago a major new development occured in the culture of the proto-Finnic groups living near the Gulf of Finland.

The result of this development was a unique form of song, characterized by alliteration and parallelism as well as an absence of stanza structure. The poetic metre of these songs was a special trochaic tetrametre, which is now often called Kalevala metre.

To find out more about Finnish music durign the spring and summer 2008, check the news at the Finnish Music Information Center, and the festival listing at Finland Festivals.

Three million spectators. Thousands of drama performances. More than 100 theaters, dance theaters and theater groups. New and live works for drama, opera and dance. Brilliant artists.

Finland's theaters are developing and renewing, and have an increasingly lively reciprocal relation with the world's many theater cultures. This development has also increased the demand for - and the importance of - information.

Finnish Dance Information Center provides information about domestic and foreign festivals and events, dance training available in Finland and abroad, and about scholarships to applicants, etc. The calendar of events provides information about dance perfomances arranged in Finland.

Kulttuuri.net stands out as a product of a working group set up by five cultural organisations: Finland Festivals, the Finnish Museums' Association, the Association of Finnish Symphony Orchestras, the Artists' Association of Finland and the Finnish Theater Information Center.